Like a Bug on a Windshield
by MCL1150
Summary: What the hell do you do when you find yourself plastered to the side of a big blue box hurtling through the Time Vortex when there shouldn't be anything there and all you were trying to do was mess with Vantas? You knock on the door.


For Doctor Who this takes place between "The Forest of the Dead" and "Midnight" and for Homestuck it takes place early on during the three years on the meteor.

Like a Bug on a Windshield

"So, where to next?" the Doctor asked, an enormous grin spread across his face. He leapt from one side of the TARDIS's console to the other, flipping switches and pulling levers in a pattern that Donna couldn't even begin to guess at.

But there was something off about his smile. _(River was dead. "Is 'alright' special Time Lord code for… not really alright at all?")_ It was the same thing that Donna was sure was off with hers. _(Lee wasn't real. "Because I'm alright, too.")_

Donna got up from her seat and returned the huge fake smile as well as she was able to. "I say that we need a vacation. We need to relax." She walked over to the Doctor and rested her arms on the console beside him. "Know of any resort planets?"

"Well actually, now that you mention it…" the Doctor's face had actually started to look like something other than sad when a thud was heard from outside the TARDIS. Donna and the Doctor both looked at the door in shock.

"Doctor…" Donna began, "aren't we in the Time Vortex?"

"Yes."

"Where nothing lives?"

"Yep," he popped the 'p' sound.

"Then what was that?" This time there was an actual knock. Was that "Shave and a Haircut?" Suddenly the smile that split the Doctor's face was completely real.

"I have no idea!" He shouted. He looked at Donna. "So let's find out. Allons-y!"

Dave Strider: Be the Coolest Cool Kid ==

Like you could possibly be anything else. You are Dave Strider, quite possible the coolest guy in at least four different universes. Completely ice cold. No living creature could possibly match your levels of chill. We are talking the solution for global warming, here.

This is why when, during a totally routine jump through the Time Vortex, an old 1950s British Police Box slams into you and leaves you hanging on for dear life, you don't freak out. Cool kids do not freak out, ever.

Instead, you slowly work your way to the door and after a second (1.025, to be exact) decide that "Shave and a Haircut" is suitably ironic.

Dave Strider: Be the Doctor ==

Okay, you just said that you could only be the coolest kid, which this "Doctor" most assuredly is not. Besides, he's probably not used to this second person narrative.

Seeing the Doctor's expression, Donna wisely decided that the best course of action was to hide behind the TARDIS's console, though she kept her head out to watch. He looked like he was about to fling the door open like an idiot despite the fact that there was a good chance whatever was on the other side would try to kill them.

The Doctor, still grinning like a maniac, flung the door open like an idiot. Donna ducked down completely, ready for a fiery explosion of death.

Instead she heard a young, American voice saying "'Sup."

"What." The Doctor, completely bewildered. Donna poked her head up from behind the console.

"Pretty nice digs dude," a young, blonde boy wearing large, aviator sunglasses and dressed completely in red, from his shoes, to his cape (?), to the stylized gear on the front of his shirt walked right into the TARDIS as though he belonged. "The inside's in another dimension." Though it should have been a question, he kept his voice completely, almost painfully deadpan.

"What?" the Doctor, again, just as disoriented. Donna stood up a little straighter. It was a rare sight for the Doctor to be speechless and she needed to see this in its entirety.

"Now I really gotta ask," the boy turned towards the Doctor and suddenly there was an ornate, but broken sword in his hand, "who the hell are you and what the fuck are you doing in the Time Vortex."

"What!" the Doctor seemed to be coming out of his befuddled state rather quickly with the emergence of a weapon. He fished through his pocket and pulled out his sonic screwdriver. "I could ask you the exact same questions, along with a few others." He pointed the screwdriver right at the boy. "For example, why does your timeline loop around you so many times, _I_ can't even make sense of it? You're practically a walking paradox!"

The boy tilted his head very slightly before raising his sword to match the Doctor's screwdriver. "You can see my timeline. That's actually kinda impressive." He gave the Doctor a small smirk. "But then, your timeline isn't any better, is it."

The two stared each other down, neither giving an inch. Donna could have slapped them both for the stupidity of men, no matter the species.

"OI!" she yelled as she stomped out from behind the console, hands on her hips. Both the Doctor and the boy turned to look at her. "Put away the rulers, boys. You" she gestured towards the Doctor, "have a screwdriver and your sword," she looked at the boy, "is broken. Neither of them is all that impressive."

The Doctor blushed spectacularly but the boy only gave her the smallest of nods and his smile widened fractionally. "Nice one." With the situation at least a little defused, they both slightly lowered their respective weapons (well, weapon and screwdriver).

"So, who are you and how did you get onto the TARDIS?" Donna asked the boy, hoping that a less confrontational approach might actually get them some answers.

The boy lowered his sword the rest of the way, though he still held it. "I'm Dave Strider, 14 years, 4 months, 13 days, 6 hours, 12 minutes, and 10.25 seconds old. And you're the ones who crashed into me."

"We crashed into you?" Donna asked.

"What were you doing in the Time Vortex?" the Doctor questioned.

"First, tell me who you are," Dave said.

"I'm Donna, regular human from Earth and fastest temp in Cheswick, and he's the Doctor, Time Lord, alien, and overall annoyance."

"Hey!"

Dave looked slightly disturbed by something Donna said, though he quickly covered it when the Doctor repeated his question.

"I was just doing a quick little time jump, just gonna play a prank on Karkat, and suddenly this box hits me like a motherfucking semi truck down the interstate and I'm just a little bug stuck on the windshield. Splat, bug guts all over your truck, gonna have to stop at the next gas station."

Donna felt slightly sick at the thought of a kid (only 14 years old!) going 'splat' against the side of the TARDIS, but the Doctor only looked affronted.

"This is the TARDIS, 'Time and Relative Dimensions in Space,' and _she_ is not a 'box.' And what were you doing, playing around with time for a prank! Of all the reckless…"

"Dude, I know how to time travel without messing things up. Believe me, I've seen enough doomed timelines and dead Daves to get it right."

"I am not 'Dude,' I am the Doctor!"

"What do mean 'dead Daves'?" Donna asked.

"Sometimes I mess up when I'm time traveling and make a doomed timeline, one that was never supposed to exist in the first place. A fucking paradox. Everyone in those timelines gets killed, because the game eats paradoxes for breakfast, but since I'm the time player, my corpse tends to end up in the Alpha Timeline. Took me a long time to learn how to get it right without any dead Daves."

Neither Donna nor the Doctor had any idea how to respond to that.

"You never told me what the hell you were doing in the Time Vortex," Dave broke the silence. "And, how the hell is she here." He pointed to Donna, whose face went from a look of horror to one of offense. "Last I checked, Earth was gone, and almost every human with it." And the horror was back.

"No, it isn't," Donna told the boy, trying to hold back panic. He was a time traveler, just like the Doctor, maybe…

"Um yeah it is, I watched the barrage of meteors take out Houston before I got into the game."

"What year?" Donna asked, a little closer to panicking. She didn't notice the Doctor repeating the word "game" to himself.

"2009."

It was 2008 when Donna left with the Doctor. If Dave was right then…

"You said you played a game?" the Doctor asked him. Donna didn't really see what was so important about a game. "What was it called?"

"Sburb."

"Donna, do you know what Sburb does?"

Well, that was a non sequitur if Donna had ever heard one. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"The Time Lords didn't know everything about this game, but we did know this much: Sburb is a game that the universe uses to create other universes, almost a way of procreation. In the process, the planet on which the game is played is destroyed."

"Other universes? You mean like alternate universes, like in one universe you make one decision, but in another you do something different?"

"No," Donna got time traveler stereo. Both Dave and the Doctor looked at each other for a second before Dave bowed ironically to the Doctor, inviting him to give the explanation. The Doctor scowled at him for a moment before turning back to Donna.

"Those are often called alternate universes simply for simplicities sake, but really they are different timelines of the same universe, contained within that one universe. Dave here is from a timeline where children on Earth played Sburb. We are from one where that game was not played. Sometimes the Time Vortex can connect between these timelines."

For the briefest of seconds, a look of almost hope passed over the part of Dave's face not covered by the sunglasses before it was replaced once more by his extraordinary poker face.

The Doctor saw it however, and gave Dave a very pitying look. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. But you need to go back to your timeline. You can't stay here. You're-"

"Needed there. Yeah I know." Dave's shouldered slumped for a brief second, before he straightened once again. "I am the Knight of Time, after all," he smirked and turned to leave. Before he reached the door of the TARDIS, he paused.

"The Doctor and Donna… you two are gonna be important I can tell. Listen, our game was wrecked before we ever got a chance to play it, infected by a cancer called Jack Noir and he escaped right out of the fucking game, into Paradox Space."

"But that's impossible!" the Doctor yelled, face going pale.

"He's going to try to destroy the whole universe and every timeline of it, including yours. Me and my friends have been chasing him to try to stop him, him and this bastard called 'Lord English' who wants to destroy every universe, but if we fail…" he didn't finish his sentence and the silence hang for a few moments.

"I don't think you will," the Doctor finally said. Dave looked up at him in actual surprise. "I know a lot about time, and about this timeline, and I happen to know that it will continue for quite a long while. I think you and your friends will stop them both."

The Doctor smiled at Dave, and the young boy returned the expression before opening the door of the TARDIS. He was suddenly outlined in a red light, a giant gear spinning behind him, and then he was gone.

"Do you really think he can do that?" Donna asked the Doctor.

"I really do," he told her.

"Is there anything we can do to help him?"

"That's not our timeline. We don't belong there just as much as he doesn't belong here." He looked at where Dave had stood with sorrow. "The best we can give him is our belief."

For a while the only sounds were the whirring and clanking of the TARDIS before the Doctor loudly clapped his hands together. "Well!" He bounded up to the console. "I think you were right, that we need some kind of break, before we burn right out. I believe you asked about resort planets? Midnight is made completely of diamond, and has some of the most famous spas in the universe…"

Midnight had been exactly what Donna had needed, though the Doctor had seemed even worse afterwards. He'd said that something had happened on the bus, something he refused to say any more about. They were stuck in Cardiff, Whales while the TARDIS refueled at the rift and Donna hoped that she could get some more of the story out of the Doctor.

She walked next to the Doctor as they left the TARDIS parked in the Roald Dahl Plass when she spotted a familiar blond head. He wasn't wearing a cape, he had jeans, and on his shirt was a broken record instead of gear, but he still wore those aviator glasses. He walked straight towards them, as though he'd known they would be there.

"Doctor, Donna," he said as he got closer to them. Donna could tell that he seemed a little older, maybe two or three years.

"I take it you won?" the Doctor asked.

"Hell yeah, we kicked those fuckers' asses so hard."

The Doctor grimaced at the language though Donna couldn't hold back a snort.

"You found a way to stay in a different timeline?" Dave nodded. "Why not go into the universe you created?"

"We didn't want to," Dave said and he put his hands in his pockets. "That game screwed us over so royally, we decided to screw with it, too. Do exactly what we weren't supposed to do." The Doctor smiled.

Donna laughed again. "Dave, why don't you come with us? I know a hell of a café about five minutes from here."

Dave Strider: Go Eat Lunch ==

You came here to these two because they're the only other time travelers that you know personally who didn't decide to stay in the dream bubbles to become some kind of psychopomp guide to the dead. They actually understand what it's like to get so tangled in your timeline that you can't really make sense of anything, and you think maybe you need that before you can go back to John and Rose and Jade and go to college like a normal kid.

Maybe it wasn't such a bad thing, getting smashed onto the TARDIS like a bug on a windshield.

Maybe you'll ask them to take you with them.


End file.
